Mike, very interesting post buddy – and impressive session.
Reminds me of stories of Bulagrian lifters lifting frequently throughout the day!
Neural Potentiation is very interesting and I looked a little at it before and have spoken to some people about it to try and understand it more. There is seems to be a balance between cns excitation and cns fatigue that is very delicate – but you guys are obviously smart enough and experienced enough to tread along that line. It is a great way to fire up the CNS and get things moving and players buzzing.
There were two interesting papers published in the past few months on similar ideas/themes and I’ll see if I can dig them up – where front squats contributed more to starting speed and back squats to longer distances when the sprints immediately followed the lift.
Another interesting concept, from sprinting, is the idea of structuring the week to build/develop/maintain CNS excitation over a week leading to a game/final etc removing the stress from the legs – but maintaining the neural potentiation. So for example, the idea is that the last heavy or explosive leg weights day might be Wednesday, explosive Push WO on Friday, explosive pull on Sat 30 mins pre game. The theory is that CNS excitation or Neural potentiation can be started and maximised on the Wednesday, maintained through Wednesday, and buzzed again on Saturday – and all the time leg fatigue is avoided by doing this. Of course in sprinting this is very important and perhaps in Rugby it’s not as critical a factor, but I’ve found it to work well (albeit in a limited context).
I’ll see if I can get those papers
By the way – I don’t believe those numbers Mike! (Joking)